Pop! sicles
by sxcond
Summary: Harry is a girl. Except, it's only in his mind. But really, that doesn't matter because everything is in his mind—even Dumbledore agrees. His whole life has always felt like a twisted, absurdly old story of quintessential heroes and prophecies and sacrifices anyways. OR: in which Harry's dislike of Petunia cutting his hair has a new meaning.


A/N my opinions on books with one too many sequels has snuck out. Oops.

CHASER 1: Alice in Wonderland

11,15 and 12

(restriction) Exactly three characters must feature

Definition of feature: to make a feature of; give prominence to.

Characters featured: Harry, James, the White Man. (Colin, Ginny and Anne aren't counted because they aren't prominent characters.

(word) kaleidoscope

(quote) 'The circumstances of one's birth are irrelevant. It's what you do with the gift of life that determines who you are.' - Mewtwo

* * *

 **BEFORE**

"Hello," said Harry to a flower. His long, black hair swayed in the wind.

The flower did not reply.

Harry cried. He just wanted someone to talk to.

* * *

 **LONDON**

Saturday: movie night. The grandfather clock ticks eight. An alarm rings through the house, and like clockwork, a small boy with black hair and glazed, blue eyes runs out of his room. He leaps onto the sofa. He snatches a remote control from the coffee table and switches on the television.

"DADDY!" James, the little boy, cries. "Hurry, hurry! A movie is starting."

"Just a minute, James," Harry Potter says as quiet and gentle as he can. Which wasn't very. He supposed the years of being Head Auror—shouting at criminals, fighting criminals, and otherwise establishing his authority and the law—had unexpectedly hardened him.

He had hoped for the opposite: that he would become a refined man of both civility and firm order. Like the _Inspector Javert_ Ginny had so despised, who was both precise in his words and unerringly law-abiding. But it was not to be, because as Harry had always been afraid to admit, the abyss would win any staring contest. Hands down. Besides, there was still too much bitterness and anger buried within for him to not have grown coarser instead.

Harry put the telephone on the table. ' _I'll continue fixing it later_ ,' he thinks, and heads to the living room. By the time he arrives, the movie opening has already begun.

"James," Harry says. He lifts James up by his armpits, and James squeals in embarrassed delight. "Excited for the movie?" Harry asks, smiling indulgently. He sits down on the sofa, placing his son on his lap.

"Yeah!" James pumps his fist in the air.

The yellow Pokemon logo flashes, and the screen snaps to an image of a sunny field.

Ten minutes after that, Harry drifts in and out of slumber.

* * *

 **BEFORE**

"Hello, Mr Caterpillar. I'm sorry for troubling you, but there's no one I can talk to. No one at school likes me, and the flowers don't answer either," Harry confessed.

The caterpillar continued eating.

Harry forced back his tears. As he ran away, the blue caterpillar began to smoke.

* * *

 **LONDON**

He wakes up almost an hour later. He remembers a kaleidoscope of changing scenes that he's accumulated while trying to stay awake and failing to do so.

He looks up and finds that the movie is still playing. From the confrontation stances and overly dramatic music, he supposes that it's the climax.

Then—

"The circumstances of one's birth are irrelevant. It's what you do with the gift of life that determines who you are."

His heart beats faster.

No. It pounds, runs, flies.

And suddenly, his heart is a zephyr; lighter than it has ever been in his entire sobering thirty-three years of life.

It doesn't matter that he's a boy, nor does it matter that he's a girl in his mind. It's what she does with her life that makes her what she is.

Right now, Harry wants to be a woman. Or rather, she's always wanted it. She could never admit it, because the opinion of the public had always chained her own. But something ha when she heard that line. _Pop!_

Now, everything seems clearer than ever. Her head is cold logic. Her brain is a sharp, sharp icicle. No reluctance, no embarrassment; what she wants, she will take.

The end credits roll.

James casts Harry's unnaturally flushed and manic expression an innocent glance, and Harry shoos him off to sleep.

After that, she packs his bag.

He finishes in an hour, and, as an afterthought, she mutters a spell that lengthens his hair.

He feels infinitesimally more comfortable already.

* * *

 **BEFORE**

Once upon a time, there was a boy named Harry. He was locked up in a black cupboard for so long that eventually, a river of long black hair began to spill across the entire floor. Eventually, he stopped crying his tears born from solitude.

Eventually, he entered a wonderland where stories and imagination lay.

There, he learned how to daydream of love and safety and how to hope.

* * *

 **LONDON**

Harry walks out the door of herself and Ginny's quaint cottage. There's a flash of light, and Harry sees the silhouette of a man in white holding a pocket watch in one hand and a camera in the other. A second after that, Harry winces, throws up her hand to shield her eyes.

 _Pop!_

He stumbles. By the time she blinks out the stars in her eyes, whomever had taken the picture had already disappeared into the night.

Anger ignites, because if the man could get past the wards to stalk her family, someone could do so much worse unless she finds out how he'd done it. Harry concentrates. Then she casts _point me,_ and like a bloodhound, follows the compass of his wand to the man in white.

(No dark-lord-wannabe was destroying her family again. She'd earned her happy ending.)

* * *

 **LONDON**

The day after she begins his hunt of the White Man—that cowardly, cowardly rabbit—Harry's photo appears on the front page of the Daily Prophet's Daily Celebrity Special section. This isn't an uncommon occurrence, except, the photo had been of herself with long hair.

Already, messages like 'PONCE' are getting scrawled in on the Daily Prophet Forums section.

Harry swallows and read the one by Ginny.

" _Harry, please come back soon. Love, Ginny."_

It's shaky, messy. He can tell that it had been quick, because Ginny had been afraid. Tom Riddle had taught her an eternal lesson. Even decades later, she still can't look let alone use a text-based, protean charmed object without quivering.

In the shadows of an alley, Harry thinks: _Love, Ginny. Love, Ginny._

Ginny understands, and, for days after that, he can't seem to stop smiling whenever he spots the colour ginger-red.

* * *

 **BEFORE**

Once upon a time, there was a boy named Harry. He liked to read fantasy books in school. In those storybooks, all the damsels in distress were girls with nice, long hair. All the pretty, fragile damsels had someone come save them.

That was all he wanted.

That was _all_ he wanted.

So he grew her hair long and wished everyday that one day, a prince would take her away.

(Eventually, the mask became its wearer.)

* * *

 **FRANCE**

' _Where are you, White Man?'_ Harry thinks, sipping coffee in a cafe down  
Rue des Rêves—street of dreams.

The _point me_ spins wildly again, and Harry sighs. It's been a week since she began this manhunt, and yet, she has caught neither hide nor hare of this particular rabbit.

* * *

 **BULGARIA**

She's visited seven different countries over two weeks. _Point me_ doesn't work anymore; her target has either found a counterspell or vanished far underground. The trail has gone colder than even the weather, so Harry supposes that she should return home.

She misses Ginny terribly.

With a pop, she spins on her heel and Apparates away.

* * *

 **LONDON**

Harry returns to Godric's Hollow, expecting the soft warmth of family and love.

But she is the tragic hero. And, as always, heros can never be happy.

' _Otherwise, there wouldn't be a story would there?'_ Harry thinks, madly. Oh yes, she's very mad right now. Madly in love. Madly angry. But mostly mad. Mad _crazy_. Because there is no home. Only a great, black pile of soot and the hints of ashen white bone littered amongst the pile. Black on white. White on black.

She collapses to her knees, traces the deceptive and bright graffiti snaking across the ruins of her home: "GAY"; "HOMO"; "PONCE"; "FAIRY".

' _The terms aren't even right_ ,' she thinks, helplessly hysterical.

Ginny, James, James—oh _Ginny_. Poor Ginny and James, it was not their fault. Unabating hate and clear black-and-white thoughts had blurred the lines between the tragic sinner (though she remembers when she was called _hero_ ) and tragic civilian.

Black on white; white on black. _There is no room for tolerance and peace in this monochrome world,_ Harry understands at last.

Chilly, crazy, comprehension sliding sliding slides into her cranium— _Pop pop pop!_

She falls into the abyss. Or, more accurately, descends into the rabbit hole where the White Man had disappeared—is what she'd like to say.

But he's vanished without a trace, and she's left with no outlet for all her anger and hatred but herself.

Still, either way, she falls.

* * *

 **?**

Once upon a time, there was a boy named Harry. Except, he wasn't a boy, and until puberty came he hadn't even been certain of the difference between both genders.

Harry was a girl.

A heroine, not a hero, though she would have preferred to be neither. Because, you see? Heros, prophesied ones especially, never get happy endings. There's always a new conflict after another and that makes a sad lot of sense since all stories need conflict. Harry knows that. She's read all the fairy tale and fantasy books. She just wished she weren't the main protagonist. She never wanted the fame, the danger, the wealth.

She would have been satisfied with being the tragic but so very fortunate damsel in perpetual distress.

* * *

 **DIAGON ALLEY**

Harry finds herself in Diagon Alley. She walks in a manner not unlike an inferi to an ice cream shop. She'd never had ice-cream until Hogwarts, and even then, it was a rare treat. Perhaps eating some ice-cream would remind her of all the good and wondrous things left in the world. If not, it'd make a good last supper.

"One sherbet lemon popsicle, please," says Harry.

The new ice cream parlour has been rebuilt where Florean Fortescue's had been before the Death Eaters had killed him. Harry wonders if the ice-cream is as good as Mr Fortescue's.

"Of course," someone says. The voice sounded familiar, but with the person's back turned, Harry can't quite recognise him.

"Here you go," Colin Creevey says, handing her a yellow popsicle.

Harry swallows. "Thanks."

As Harry walks away, he hears Colin speaking rapidly to someone at the back of the parlour. "Anne! Guess what? I just spoke to Harry Potter! Wow, I haven't seen him in years, his hairstyle is new but pretty neat, I might grow my hair out too—"

Harry is a girl. Except, it's only in her mind.

And she knows it forever will be unless she renounces this malignant reality.

 _Pop!_

She falls into her head: her eternal and beautiful wonderland of hope and imagination. There, she dreams of a better world.

(On the crooked cobblestones of Diagon Alley, her popsicle melts into a sticky puddle on her hand.)

* * *

 **AFTER**

Once upon a time, Alice followed a white rabbit until she fell down a rabbit hole.

The falling was dark and awful and her family died. And because it was dark and awful, she remembered times long ago. When she talked to the caterpillar, when she talked to the flower; Because she had been so very lonely then. There had been no one except the dark.

(There still isn't. But she's now in Wonderland, and it's called a wonder-land for a reason, no?)

* * *

fin.


End file.
